


Found Them And Wound Them Again

by balloonwhisk



Series: The Only Thing That Makes Sense [5]
Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, The rating is for language, another coda for 50 - Rose, taking place on the same day as the previous story, there is again some passing mention of Rose/Emily and Damien/Mark but it's not the focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 09:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15288321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/balloonwhisk/pseuds/balloonwhisk
Summary: Rose calls Damien for advice.





	Found Them And Wound Them Again

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually supposed to be one story together with Drift Up the Dark, but it took me a million years to write and it could have used a million more years tbh but here we are! I think this is the last one in the series? There is so much I want them to talk about but I just can't seem to make them, as me and Damien are both ardent members of the _rather die than express one genuine feeling I have_ club lmao
> 
> The title is from [The Clocks Were Asleep](https://youtu.be/DyrLlz9FQKU) by Regina Spektor
> 
> This is also inspired by this quote by Death in Sandman: _"Nobody's creepy from the inside. Some of them are sad, and some of them hurt, and some of them think they're the only real thing in the whole world. But they're not creepy."_
> 
> Please let me know if you see any mistakes. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!

The house was empty when Rose got home after work. She was still feeling restless after taking a shower to wash off the day, so she tried doing one of the meditation exercises Dr. Bright had taught her.

She turned off the lights, sat cross legged on the floor at the foot of her bed and closed her eyes. It was always more difficult to go deeper inside herself than sideways into someone else’s mind, but she was getting the hang of it. She slowly made her body relax from her feet to the top of her head. She thought of herself as a young kid in her grandmother’s kitchen as she taught her how to make cabbage rolls. Rose was always too generous with the filling and her little fingers were not strong enough to make neat rolls but her grandmother was patient and would smile widely at her and tell her that she was getting better and better before gently placing each roll into the pot. She imagined the repetitive movements of her hands, the murmur of her dad and grandfather talking in the next room, the patch of sun warming her back and turning her grandmother’s graying hair golden. She inhaled the naphthalene smell of her grandparents’ apartment. She was startled by a hand on her shoulder. She looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun and saw tired eyes and a cracking, barely held-together face. Mark.

“You have to leave.”

“What?”

“ _Go._ ”

The room was suddenly plunged into darkness. A dot of blueish gray light appeared in the distance, gradually getting larger until it finally became a TV screen. She turned her head to ask Mark where her grandmother had gone and what was going on but instead she found that she was sitting beside Damien on his couch, his dark eyes boring into hers in the dim light.

“This is who you are.” Damien said, his voice uncharacteristically grave. “You can’t hide from it. You can’t escape.”

Rose remembered riding in the car with him, the bottomless pit that had opened up inside her, that was opening now, a chasm waiting to swallow her.

She opened her eyes, breathing heavily. The room was dark and she spent a few minutes trying get her heartbeat under control. She dragged herself to her nightstand and turned on the lamp. The soft light helped her calm down and after a while she grabbed her cell phone and scrolled down her messages until she got to the only number not saved to her contacts. She had read all the texts, but had never answered. Not that that had stopped Damien from complaining at length about the lady who sat beside him on the bus who went on and on about her niece, or sending her rants about the questionable taste of gas station burritos. For someone who kept insisting that he would never bother her again, he was certainly the neediest person she had ever met. He had even left her a long rambling voicemail at 3 in the morning because he was positive he had bumped into an empath. He could still kind of feel the outlines of emotions, he’d said, and he’d been practising trying to break through to people he came across until he met one woman whose feelings had exploded in his mind like popcorn when he reached out and almost swept him away before he wrenched himself free. He’d sounded really rattled, and Rose had half-wished that she had been awake and picked up so that she could find out more.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she dialled the number. It rang for a long time and she was about to hang up, thinking it was probably for the best, when Damien picked up.

His terse “Hello?” was accompanied by soft elevator music.

“Hi, Damien. It’s Rose.”

“I know. Hang on a minute.”

“If this is not a good time-”

There was no answer other than the swoosh of swinging doors, a lock clicking into place and Damien’s resigned _ugh_ followed by what sounded suspiciously like a toilet flushing. “What’s up?”

“Uh… How are you?”

“Oh, you know…”

“Right... Well…” Rose trailed off, sheepish.

“Why’d you call?”

“I wondered how you were doing.”

Damien raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“I don’t know. I had a dream about you. Well, not a dream exactly but I was meditating and you were there and I’ve been thinking about it, you know, that drive with Mark? I just… I just wanted to call you.”

“Okay.” Damien still sounded skeptical. “What happened? I’ve gotten nothing from you in weeks, not that I expected to but I thought- Nevermind. _Something_ must have happened for you to stoop so low as to actually call me.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Damien…”

“Am I wrong?”

“No.” Rose admitted reluctantly. “But that makes me sound like an asshole.”

Damien shrugged. “Your words.”

“Hey, I don’t owe you anything! You lied to me!”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve said that a million times.” Damien grumbled, lamenting that she was still a huge pain in the ass. But annoyingly enough, he’d missed her. He was afraid that if he pushed too hard, she would just hang up and that would be the end of it. “Let’s hear it,” he went on gruffly.

Rose heaved a sigh.“I think I fucked up.”

“Welcome to the club.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” When Rose didn’t elaborate, he prodded her with a pointed “well?” that failed pathetically at hiding his curiosity.

“I went dreamwalking.”

“So? You do that all the time.”

“I’ve been trying to not do it as much.”

“You haven’t been trying very hard.”

“What would you know about it?” Rose said sharply. “I’m trying to turn it inwards. That helps, apparently.”

“Does it?”

“A bit. Also, Emily’s been helping me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. We have a deal where I can hang out with her in her dreams if she knows I’m there.”

“Huh.” Damien considered this. He closed the toilet seat and sat down. “So this is about Emily? I’m really not the person to come to for relationship advice.”

Rose snorted. “No, it’s not about Emily.” Even though she was the one who called him to talk, she was reluctant to actually bring up the gang. From everything they told her, Damien was dangerous even without his power. But she knew him in a way they didn’t. In a way they couldn’t. _Fuck it_ , Rose thought. “It’s about the others.”

That got Damien’s full attention. “What about them?”

“Well, I’ve been hanging out with Caleb and Adam a bit, you know? And the other day I went to Sam and Mark’s place to watch musicals-”

“They’re living together?”

“I think so?” Rose hugged her knees to her chest and tried to remember the beginning of Sam’s dream. “I don’t know for sure. That’s not really why I called.”

Damien rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, okay, you went over there, and?”

“We ended up watching three movies. You won’t believe how into musicals Dr. Bright is! Her and Mark know _Singing In The Rain_ by heart! It’s honestly kind of scary…”

Damien barked out a hollow laugh. He tried to picture it, overlaying snippets from his memory of Mark softly singing Paolo Nutini to himself in the car when they couldn’t find a decent radio station and the rare times he’d managed to coax a genuine smile out of Dr. B instead of her usual irritated frown, but it wasn’t right. Slowly it was becoming clear that he’d never really known either of them at all. He didn’t know how to just _be_ with people, how to know them. Everyone he met, everywhere he went, it had only been himself that was reflected back to him. As if he was the only real thing in the whole world.

“Anyway,” Rose interrupted his self-indulgent downward spiral, “we were all pretty beat towards the end and we fell asleep.”

“And you went into their dreams?”

“Not all of them. Just Sam and Caleb and Mark. And Dr. Bright, too, but she was awake at the time and that was a jumble.”

Damien perked up. “How do you mean?”

“Subconsciousnesses are weird. And I didn’t expect how chaotic Dr. Bright’s would be. She’s always so collected, it threw me off. I could feel her all her worry and doubt and... There was _a lot_ going on, I had to get out of there pretty quick.”

“But the others were asleep.”

“Yeah. It was alright at first. They were all, like, happy and excited.” Rose grinned. “It’s really neat to see what people change and what they keep and what they come back to, you know? Tells you a lot about a person.”

“You sound way too gleeful for someone traipsing around in people’s heads uninvited.”

“And you sound just like Agent Green.”

“Huh?”

“He was there, too. In the dream, I mean.”

“What the? Why the hell was he there?”

“He tagged along. I couldn’t shake him off.”

“I’m glad you didn’t bring him into my head at least.”

“It wasn’t actually him, you boob. It was me, or a part of me. You knew I was going in, they didn't. I felt guilty, I guess.”

“I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it myself, as I recall.”

“It wasn’t a barrel of laughs for me either. Your mind was creepy. And very, _very_ sad.” Rose cocked her head. “But illuminating. Overall, I’d give it a 6 out of 10.”

“Thank you _so much_ for the feedback.”

Rose blew right past the sarcasm. “Everyone’s is though, if you look in deep enough. Maybe not to the same extent, but.”

“That’s what freaked you out?”

“A bit. But that’s not all.”

“I don’t get what the problem is, Rose.”

“You remember how I can have an effect on dreams sometimes?”

“Vividly.”

Forgetting Damien couldn’t see her, Rose widened her eyes meaningfully and waved her free hand around to show how dense he was being. When that unsurprisingly didn’t work, she let out a frustrated growl.

Finally the penny dropped. “Oh shit, what did you do?”

“I may have inadvertently made them reveal and face their deepest fears via musical numbers.”

“ _Wow._ ”

“Yeah.”

“Yikes.”

Rose made a sound of agreement.

Damien leaned forward in his seat. “So, what were they dreaming about?”

“I can’t tell you that!” Rose said, appalled. “I don’t go around telling people about _your_ dreams. Well, I did talk to Mark about them-” she amended.

“ _You told Mark?_ ” Damien hissed with pure, unadulterated terror.

“Only about the first one at the AM! And I didn’t tell him details or anything. I was just trying to make sense of everything. After all that you’ve done, don’t you think he deserved to know?”

“You don’t get to decide that!”

“I’m sorry! But, it’s done now, okay?”

The only response she got was an angry huff.

“Damien,” Rose pointed out evenly, “you are quite possibly the last person in the world who can give me shit about this.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not right.”

“I know.”

Damien heaved a put-upon sigh, but relented. “So. What happened after you _Once More, With Feeling_ -ed everyone?”

Rose made a mental note to come back to Damien’s whole thing with _Buffy_ at some point. He’d clearly been learning all the wrong lessons. “I woke up. But-”

“But what?”

“Mark caught me. People don’t realize I’m there if they don’t know to look for it. And even then it’s not a sure thing. But I guess with me there he’d be able to dreamwalk, too? It just took him a while.”

“How was his dream?” Rose made a noise of protest but Damien pushed forward. “Is he doing okay?”

“Not really.” She hesitated, unsure of how much to reveal. “His was the hardest.”

“Was I-” Damien swallowed. “Did you see me? In the dream?”

“No, you weren’t in it at all.”

“Right.” Damien couldn’t hide the bitterness creeping into his voice.

“Do you still see him?” Rose asked, though she already knew the answer.

“Often enough.”

“I’m sorry.” Rose said softly.

Damien brushed it off. “Whatever. So what did he do when he saw you?”

“He told me to leave.”

“Sounds about right.”

Rose rested her forehead on her knees and mumbled, “I ruined everything.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“I did! I wish there was a way to do this without hurting people. I don’t want to stop doing it. I can’t.”

Damien felt a familiar resentment rise up in him. “Who said you had to stop?”

“I don’t know how I can keep on doing it either.”

“Only Mark saw you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then, it’ll be fine. I don’t think he’d tell on you.”

“That’s not even remotely the point, Damien!” Rose griped. “Why did I think talking to you would be helpful?”

“Beats me.” Damien glared at the misshapen penis some asshole had actually carved on the door of the stall. “What do you want me to say?”

“ _I don’t know!_ For some reason, I thought you would understand.”

“I do. But I don’t have an answer for you. None that you want to hear, apparently.”

“‘Just keep doing it’ is not an answer!” Rose exhaled loudly through her nose. “Have you ever wished you could just stop?”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I have stopped.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Maybe. A long time ago, when I was about your age.” Damien shrugged. “After… there was no point.”

He sounded defeated. Rose thought back on her morning with Emily, and how she’d told her they’d figure it out together. Emily, who had shown up one day with a box filled with research on lucid dreaming; who tried to help her wholeheartedly no matter what bullshit Rose threw at her, be it Shabbat with her family with no boundaries and many knowing looks or finding the real owners of a strange dude’s weirdly swanky apartment and roping in her cousin to handle the legal stuff. She also thought of following Damien around as he wandered alone in his dreams, feeling the absence inside him that had no clear shape but was still piercing. His ever changing moods, in turn sleazy, caustic and skittish in the short span of an afternoon. His awkwardness with physical contact. “Where are you?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Can you stop being impossible for two seconds?”

Damien groaned. “I’m out West. That’s all you’re getting.”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

She only got stubborn silence from the other end.

“Fine.” She was at a loss. Damien had always been strangely easy to talk to. Maybe that was only because she’d always had a purpose for speaking to him. Finding out about the AM, figuring out how on earth he could have done the things he’d done and what the hell was going on between him and Mark… And now she’d called him for what? Advice? Because she was worried? There was no one less deserving of worry. But, they were kind of friends, right? He’d let her in, allowed her to see a part of himself that no one had. He’d trusted her with it. She’d had to twist his arm to do it, sure, but still. She was beginning to see that it was a gift to be given permission, to be invited. “Are _you_ okay? Honestly?”

“I… I don’t know.” Damien replied grumpily. “It’s hard. And weird.”

Rose hesitated before asking, “Do you have people? Friends?”

“Well, not many people can resist my magnetic personality and sparkling wit.”

“So, none, then?”

“Hilarious.” Damien deadpanned.

Rose chuckled and when Damien next spoke she could hear a smile echoed back in his voice. “My people skills are rusty.”

“Did you ever have any?” she teased.

“Hey! I did okay with you!”

“Did you, though?”

“You’re still talking to me, aren’t you?” Damien pointed out, strangely vulnerable. “Even after everything you learned, you came back.” He made mortified face at himself. “You must like me a little.” he said slyly to cover it up.

“Don’t push it.” Rose warned, but it was warm.

They were quiet, until Damien grew uncomfortable with the easy peacefulness of the moment.

“That’s enough sharing and caring for today. I should get back to work.”

“You’re at work?! Why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Eh, it’s alright. It’s not like my boss is going to hate me more than he already does. He keeps creeping up on me, accusing me of stealing stuff.”

“Are you?”

“I _may_ have borrowed a pack of Red Vines every now and again.” Damien admitted.

“How do you _borrow_ -” Rose started, exasperated, but decided she was too tired to get sucked into this argument. “You know what, I don’t care. I’ll let you get back to it.” She yawned. “Thank you for picking up. And listening, I guess.”

“It was my pleasure.” Damien said in his usual drawl, but he sounded genuine as he continued, “take care of yourself, Rose.”

“You too.”

Rose hung up, and lowered her phone to her lap. The screen once again showed the string of unanswered texts. She grinned a little, feeling fond despite herself, and added the number to her contacts.


End file.
